Mix dough by folding and stretching in the bowl for 20 strokes. Repeat this 3 more times at 20 minute intervals.

Refrigerate dough, covered tightly, for 21 hours.

Divide into 4 equal parts and preshape gently for baguettes.

Allow preshaped pieces to rest, covered with plastic, for 1 hour.

Shape into ficelles (short, thin baguettes).

Proof en couche or on parchment paper dusted with semolina for 45 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 500F with baking stone in middle rack and a cast iron skillet and a metal loaf pan on the lowest rack. Preheat 45 minutes or longer before baking.

3-5 minutes before baking, place a handful of ice cubes in the loaf pan. Shut the oven door. Bring water to a boil.

Transfer the ficelles to a peel and load them onto the baking stone. Pour one cup of boiling water into the skillet. Close the oven door.

Turn the oven down to 480F.

After 10 minutes, remove the loaf pan and the skillet from the oven.

Continue baking for another 10-15 minutes until the loaves are nicely colored, the crust is hard all around and the bottom gives a hollow sound when tapped. Internal temperature should be at least 205F.

Cool on a rack completely before slicing.

Anis Bouabsa is a young Parisian boulanger who won the prize for the best baguettes in Paris in 2008. He gave Janedo, a French home baker extraordinaire and a member of TFL, his formula, and Jane shared it with us. He uses a technique of a long, cold fermentation which has been used, with variations, by a number of contemporary French bakers.In addition to producing wonderfully flavored bread, it also permits the home baker to make bread using two blocks of about 2-3 hours rather than requiring longer time blocks. For example, I mixed the dough yesterday evening after dinner. I took it out of the refrigerator at about 4:30 pm this afternoon, and we ate it with dinner at 7:30 pm.These ficelles sang loudly coming out of the oven. I cooled them for only 20-30 minutes. The crust was very crunchy, and the crumb had a sweetness that would make one think there was sugar in the dough. Very yummy.Variations on Bouabsa's formula, adding 100 gms of sourdough starter and substituting 10% rye or whole wheat flour for an equal amount of white flour, make a delicious pain de campagne, which has become a favorite bread of several of us.This is described in my blog entries under "Pain de Campagne" and "San Joaquin Sourdough."Enjoy!David

Giusto's Baker's Choice is a type that I do not have access to. I primarily use any thing KA because of its accessibility in the supermarkets. I live in Indiana so certain flours do not make thier way here. Can I use a KA product that is close to the Giusto's?

Many thanks,

Chuppy

P.S. Have you ever worked in a proffessional bakery or just a home artisan?

So your saying that I could continue to use KA on a regular basis? I do like the quality of flour that is milled by KA. Once again we are limited to what we can purchase in the grocery.

What I meant by "Just" a home artisan, is have you practiced your skills by only baking at home. By the looks of your loves, you seem to have a professional touch to what you do. The pics of the ficelles are absolutely amazing to look at. I only wish I could produce such baked goods. Hopefully, with the help of others on The Fresh Loaf, I can begin trying to replicate what others like yourself have been doing for quite some time.

From my understanding, the bakers method of measuring ingrediants by percentage is a very fluent langauge and one that is importanat to understand the basics of bread baking in general.

You are going to find differences in how flours behave day to day depending on the batch of grain, ambient humidity and temperature, etc.

You can substitute flours, but it will have consequences in how the dough behaves and feels. With experience, you will come to connect how the dough acts with how the bread turns out. We can talk in generalities about this, but there really is no substitute for (literally) hands-on experience.

I am a home baker. I've never even taken a class. In fact, I've never even worked face-to-face with another bread baker. Yet, I can't believe how much better my breads have become since I started hanging out on TFL. I just checked. It's only been 15 months. Un-freaking-believable!

Now, I wasn't just hanging out. I was asking questions like crazy. I was seriously surfing old topics. I was venting my frustration when something wasn't working for me. I was reading lots of the recommended books. I was getting a LOT of help and encouragement from the more experienced bakers here who were producing loaves I could only dream about making some day. And - whatdoyouknow! My breads got better!

Nothing magic about it. Just plain old persistance and a pinch of perfectionism and a passion for challenges, not to mention a passion for great bread.

I've seen many others travel this road and arrive at breads that make you jump for joy when you take them out of your oven. It's a great trip! Enjoy it.

Nice to see you... and your bread! They look lovely. I don't drink café au lait anymore except on a rare occasion as a treat, but one of my very favorite breakfasts is a BIG café au lait with ficelles like yours spread with butter and jam. Absolutely heaven! Add to that sitting at an outdoor café on the edge of the beach in a town called Collioure:

Je suis d'accord! I had half a ficelle, cut end to end with butter and homemade strawberry jam for breakfast. No café au lait, though - just a pot of very delicious Kenyan coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland.

hi, tried your recipe to the letter, yesterday / today, except i doubled the quantity.results dissapointing as they didn't rise, I made each baguette about 250 grammes each, tastes ok - but flat as a pancake. any ideas why?

The "flat as a pancake" issue needs your clarification regarding at what stage the loaves were flat. Even if they spread a lot during proofing or transferring, if you did everything else right, they should have had good oven spring and rounded out a lot. If they didn't spring, you may have shaped the baguettes to roughly (popping the bubbles that form during fermentation0, over-proofed, not heated your oven stone enough, not steamed the oven well.

These possible explanations are not mutually exclusive. Everything matters.

'Flat as a pancake' was a touch of British exaggeration on my part, They were pretty flat and didn't form the roundish shape as you'd expect, (more alligators than Pythons). That was after baking; they rose a reasonable amount during proofing.

As for shaping, I did them in the same way as always, Bertinet style - you might say.

Proofed for 21 hr's exactly in the fridge and out an hour to room temp before the first rough shaping, and after the second baguette formation, on a couche well floured, as is the custom.

As far as yeast goes I used 1/2tsp of Instant yeast as quantities were doubled.

I know it doesn't make sense, the only thing i can think of is that the yeast I used was bad? Or insufficient for the flour I'm using, I use Manitoba, or very strong canadian bread flour that whole foods here in London sell.

They just didn't spring up.. Too embarrased to attach pic's will try again with 20g of fresh yeast I think..D'you reckon that's a good idea?

Such beautiful bread! I made my first baguettes last week in my new wood-fired bread oven. They were good, but no better than what you can buy in the shops, and not anything like the beauties here! I wonder if the ice cubes in a cast iron pan would work in a brick oven. Any ideas out there?

I can't speak to humidification of a wood-fired oven, having no experience with them. I've wondered about that myself. It's my impression that those using them don't do anything to introduce extra moisture, but maybe we'll hear from some with personal experience.

There are some pictures of focaccia and a neighbor's sourdough that came out great! I am going to try the ficelle recipe this weekend. My plan is to make enough dough ahead of time and freeze it, so I can thaw and rise at intervals. That way I can have several loads of bread. (Christmas presents!) I'll let you know how that goes. It has all the potential for a real mess!

Some people have suggested using a garden hose and just give your oven a spritz inside....is you have a wooden door that can be soaked in water...if you have a large load of bread the moisture coming from the bread can create enough natural steam....using a wet/damp mop on the floor of your oven can tend to cool your oven floor temp. down and this is usually done just to clean up the ash before baking. These are only suggestions as to what you might try if you want to put steam into your oven.

I bake all our breads & pizza in the WFO I built over a year ago. For moisture when baking breads, after all the coals have been raked out and the temperature has settled to near baking levels, and shortly before loading the oven, I mop out the floor with a damp - not wet - mop. This will clean the hearth, of course, but it also helps reduce the temperature and adds a bit of steam/moisture to the oven. Then I load up the oven and spritz with a spray bottle I bought at the Dollar Store. The spritzing is done above the breads - not on the breads - and this will steam up. Water evaporates before hitting anything. I spray a few seconds alllowing it to steam. Then I close the oven and bake away. It gets great oven spring & crust. Also, as stated above, the moisture of the dough helps. My oven is 42" and I can put about 18 boules in there at a time. So that alone drops temps a bit before the oven regulates itself, as well as adds moisture to the oven.

I have seen wood or gas fired brick ovens with built-in methods for maintaing moisture or for adding it when needed. One oven had a valve or a spigot or somethiong that allowed the baker to add as he felt a need. I never saw it in action so I don't know how it worked, or when he applied it.

Another oven had a well built into the floor of the oven. The baker would place a small pail that fit into the hole and remain level with the hearth surface. He would cover the hole/pail with a grill type lid that allowed the steam but would not be a hole in the floor.

For a couple of years I baked for a bakery (I came in each morning to a refrigerated dough and it was my job to shape/proof/bake). We had a pair of convection ovens so the floor of the ovens was available. That's where I had a roasting pan filled with terra cotta from old, broken flower pots. Just before loading the oven I would add a small amount of water into the pan and close the door while I was lining up the sheet pans and dusting & slashing the loaves. Then, once all the bread was loaded I would fill the roasting pans with water, close the door and not open it for about 15 minutes.

Thanks for posting these wonderful pictures and recipe. I had good luck today with your recipe adapted to a room-temperature ferment -- see here. I don't know how you managed to get such great rip on the top with this wet dough.

Yes - we use a wood-handled mop (well wrung out) - to clean the sole of ashes and add moisture, but I was warned by Alan Scott that I should never use any free water on the firebricks. I think that I will start to mop for a longer period of time, adding more steam and also try the ice-cube in the loaf pan and the boiling water in the cast-iron pan. Thanks for you thoughts! It 's really fun to try to figure this stuff out!

I wasn't sure of what the dough temperature was supposed to be so, I nuked the water for about 30 seconds (my well water is so cold in the winter, drinking a full glass causes brain freeze).

The next evening I removed the dough from the cooler and had to make a quick trip to YouTube to check out the baguette shaping videos. The dough was so responsive that I missed the mark of short, thin baguettes, winding up with three long thin baguettes and one shorter one (I should have weighed the dough before cutting it). There was no going back at that point and while my shaping skills need work, it was great fun working with the dough.

I should have slashed deeper, or vertically. Actually, I'm surprised I was even able to get a few cuts in.

The ficelles tasted wonderful; the crumb was nice and open, and the crust was crisp and chewy.

I will definitely practice making more of these, but am curious about the water temperature you used, and what effect using water of 40F would have.

Thanks so much for posting this formula. These will make great Christmas gifts!

I don't obsess over water temperature, although if a recipe is specific about it I follow the instructions. 40F is pretty cold, though. When I start with cold water, I usually warm it to "tepid" - 70-85F. The main effect of colder water would be to slow down fermentation. That is good for flavor development, but it could be a problem if timing is important to you.

I''m glad you liked your results. You should try this recipe with 100 gms added sourdough starter and 10% rye flour. The flavor is even better, in my opinion. The crust is less crunchy and more chewy with the sourdough, of course.

Wow! Your crumbs is great! I am a firm believer that baguettes really don't have to be picture perfect to be incredibly GOOD! The "proper" look will come with practice. (I still haven't managed, but don't care). You can play with the hydration depending on the flour you're using.

Tell us what you think of the sourdough version. I like it even better than these ones.

I love your philosophy, Jane...although I'm a bit late in saying so! I tried the sourdough version but in my enthusiasm to load the oven, one baguette flew off the stone to the bottom rack. If I ever do that again, I think I'll just let the fallen bread bake (or maybe burn) in place because I lost a lot of oven heat while fishing it out. The baguttes that managed to stay on the stone were quite tasty, but didn't get the benefit of a sustained blast of heat and steam.

I'm going mix up two batches tomorrow after work so I can bake them the next morning for Christmas Eve dinner.

I really must thank you for getting Mr. Bouabsa to share his formula, and to you and David for working out the details and making them available here. It is a great gift that keeps on giving each time they're baked While I'm at it, I have to note my appreciation to Mark for his baguette shaping video. Better shaping has led to better scoring....but still not as pretty as David's.

I have had some terrible oven bread disasters! But losing one baguette is better than a whole loaf. Oh well, perfecting baguettes is lots of fun anyway. I think I'll do some up for Christmas, too. I really have to decide what I'm going to make for the meal, though!!!

"It is best for slack doughs. Most use a flexible plastic scraper, but I have found a rubber spatula to work as well. Remember, we are talking about very sticky doughs. Believe me: getting the dough to stick to the spatula or scraper is not a problem. Getting it unstuck? Well that's another matter.

So, your dough is in a bowl that is large, say 3 times the dough's volume. You insert your scraper between the dough and the bowl at 12 o'clock (assuming you are at 6 o'clock) and stretch the dough your scraper contacts up and over the ball of dough and press it into the dough. If you do this fast, the dough will release the scraper. Maybe some will stick to it.

Turn the bowl 1/5 turn. (I am right-handed and rotate the bowl clockwise.) Insert your scraper between the new portion of dough now at 12 o'clock and do as described above again. Repeat this turn, insert, stretch, press, release maneuver 20 times.

Cover the bowl and set a timer for when you want to repeat this procedure. Generally, this would be between 20 and 60 minutes.

How many times you repeat it depends on the degree of gluten development you want.

I have been doing 3 sets of stretch-and-folds 20 minutes apart for a dough with 75% hydration."

I tried this tonight but I don't have a scale (yet), so I used an online conversion to approximate. I used 5 cups of flour when I think it should have been more like 4. Does this sound right?

After I realized it wasn't right I adjusted the water up at the beginning of the autolyse and tried to follow the method but the dough was very elastic, nowhere near what the video shows. I'll still cook the bastards, no sense in wasting the flour but I don't have high hopes. Who knows, stranger things have happened.

I'm going to try this recipe again later this week when I finally break down and buy a scale.

I baked the dough that I messed up on the measurements with. Well, it's a testament to this recipe because they didn't come out half bad. I continue to bungle the techniques and my oven really has a difficult time getting up to and sustaining the high temperatures required to give a good crisp crust, but overall a decent baguette.

Here's the crumb. I had to turn the flash off or you couldn't see it very well.

With my new knowledge (and a scale) I'll try again this weekend with I'm sure improved results.

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